So I looked into Zimbra. Zimbra ships as a Virtual Appliance which was perfect for my needs and a 10 user limited license is fairly inexpensive as in free.

Zimbra

My attempts to install Zimbra using the RPM method on CentOS 5.4 hit a snag. There is apparently some sort of network scan that goes on to determine if your settings are correct, etc. I was able to install it, but the configuration stated antispam and antivirus were not available, even though the proper files were installed. So I figured I would try out the virtual appliance.

The virtual appliance imported just fine, but on boot it tried to do the same network scan to determine if the settings were correct even though I gave it a STATIC IP, etc. Since this was to live behind NAT, there is no direct access between it and many of the things it apparently needed. The Virtual Appliance did not boot fully.

So Zimbra did not work for me. I am not sure why it does any sort of scan. This worries me from a Security perspective as I did not know WHAT it was doing. Nor was it explained clearly. In essence my network did not allow Zimbra to properly find everything. Perhaps it is looking for a lax set of security for a DMZ location.

MailScanner

When I had a physical mail server, I used to use MailScanner and was pleased with it, but upgrades were a pain so I went to something different when I went virtual. Alas, that was my downfal. MailScanner (http://www.mailscanner.info) incorporates many of the same things as Zimbra but in a much different package. So I went back to a base CentOS 5.4 installa nd worked out from there.

MailScanner comes with two sets of packages MailScanner-4.79.11-1.rpm.tar.gz and install-Clam-SA-latest.tar.gz. The first installs MailScanner and all its dependencies, and the later installs the latest ClamAV and SpamAssassin as well as the rules. So far so good. During configuration of MailScanner I also determined that I needed the following tools:

• unrar  – http://packages.sw.be/unrar
• antiword – http://packages.sw.be/antiword
• DCC – http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc
• Razor – http://razor.sourceforge.net

Then I needed a modern version of postfix (2.7.1), which I found in binary and source form from http://postfix.wl0.org/.  I first tried the binary but determined it did not support SASL authentication via TLS, so had to recompile from source with a slight change to the SPEC file. I enabled ‘with_sasl’ then rebuilt from source. The following builds this as an installable RPM for me.

rpm -ivh postfix-2.7.1-1.src..rpm
# Modify /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/postfix.spec to enable SASL
rpmbuild -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/postfix.spec

Now postfix was ready. I have done all this before, but many years ago. Next was to make sure postfix runs within a chroot jail for security reasons…. So how do we do this? Run the following scripts:

sh /etc/postfix/examples/chroot-setup/LINUX2
sh /etc/postfix/postfix-chroot.sh

Now I was ready to turn everything on which I did. But I still have an authentication problem with postfix from my smtp clients. But they would not connect. Which lead me to determine that the chroot setup for SASL was incorrect and we needed to perform some more changes. Such as the following.

mkdir -p /var/spool/postfix/var/run
mv /var/run/saslauthd /var/spool/postfix/var/run
ln -s /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd /var/run/saslauthd
cp /etc/passwd /var/spool/postfix/etc
mv /etc/sasl2 /var/spool/postfix/etc
ln -s /var/spool/postfix/etc/sasl2 /etc/sasl2

Now I am backup. I even made some new changes to the main.cf within postfix which disables anonymous clients from accessing my mailserver for relay purposes. The following are those changes to /etc/postfix/main.cf. I placed these at the end:

# SASL
smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtpd_sasl_path = smtpd
smtpd_sasl_local_domain = $myhostname
smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtpd_sasl_tls_security_options = noanonymous
broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes

Conclusion
This new setup started blocking more spam than the old configuration. Which was exactly what I wanted to happen. Unfortunately Zimbra would not work for me and that was an issue. I was really looking forward to working with Zimbra, but it was just too problematic. Yes, if I understood it as well as I understand postfix and MailScanner I may have tried to solve the problem, but this time I did not have the time. Zimbra needs to be simpler to use, paying attention to the manual configurations I make instead of trying to determine my network, etc.

New Mail Server: Zimbra? MailScanner? is a post from: Blue Gears

• Went to the NVIDIA site and downloaded the latest drivers, mine were just a little old. After installing them, the problem was not solved.
• Logged in with the 640×480 resolution and ran gnome-display-properties and noticed it could not determine my monitor type.
• I searched the web some at this point and found two posts.

Post 1 was about setting up the Xorg.conf file to force the NVidia Resolution.. This resulted in the following /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Section "Device"
   Identifier  "8800GTX"
   Driver      "nvidia"
Option "NvAGP" "0"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "UseEdidDpi" "FALSE"
Option "UseEdid" "FALSE"
Option "DPI" "96 x 96"
       Option     "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
       Option     "DRI"     "true"
       Option     "HWcursor"
       Option     "CursorShadow"
       Option     "CursorShadowAlpha" "32"
       Option     "CursorShadowXOffset" "2"
       Option     "CursorShadowYOffset" "2"
       Option     "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
       Option     "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# Screen sections
# **********************************************************************
# Any number of screen sections may be present.  Each describes
# the configuration of a single screen.  A single specific screen section
# may be specified from the X server command line with the "-screen"
# option.
Section "Screen"
   Identifier  "Screen 1"
   Device      "8800GTX"
   Monitor     "Belinea"
       DefaultDepth 24
       Option          "NoVirtualSizeCheck"
       Option         "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"
       Option         "RenderAccel" "True"
       Option         "NoRenderExtension" "False"
       Option         "AllowGLXWithComposite" "True"
       Option         "UseEdidFreqs" "false"
       Option         "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
       Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"
       Option "UseEdidDpi" "FALSE"
       Option "UseEdid" "FALSE"
       Option         "metamodes" "1920x1080_60 +0+0; 1280x1024_60 +0+0; 1024x768_60 +0+0; 1024x768 +0+0; 800x600 +0+0; 640x480 +0+0; 1280x1024 +0+0; 1920x1080 +0+0"
   SubSection     "Display"
       Depth       24
       virtual    1920 1080
       Modes      "1920x1080" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "1600x1200" "800x600" "640x480"
   EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
   # HorizSync source: xconfig, VertRefresh source: xconfig
   Identifier     "Belinea"
   VendorName     "Unknown"
   ModelName      "CRT-1"
   HorizSync       31.5 - 100.0
   VertRefresh     40.0 - 150.0
#    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

After making these changes I was able to get a resolution of 1920×1080 in panning mode as the monitor itself would not go past 1280×1024. Monitor Panning annoys me quite a bit as I am constantly moving around the monitor to develop, monitor, and work with my virtual environment, customer virtual environments, and programming. So panning would soon give me a pretty bad headache. I could live with 1280×1024 if I wanted to do so, but I really wanted more.

Post 2 was about setting the proper modelines for the monitor to have the proper resolution. I installed the monitor-edid package to query the edid from the monitor itself. The automatic EDID determinationwas disabled by the xorg.conf file I used, documented above. I ran two commands:

monitor-edid-using-vbe| parse-edid

To retrieve the necessary ModeLine to insert into my xorg.conf file. The highlighted section of the xorg.conf file was changed to be by just adding the new ModeLine.

Section "Monitor"
# HorizSync source: xconfig, VertRefresh source: xconfig
Identifier     "Belinea"
VendorName     "Unknown"
ModelName      "CRT-1"
ModeLine "1920x1080" 148.5 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync
HorizSync       31.5 - 100.0
VertRefresh     40.0 - 150.0
#    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Resetting the X server resulted in a properly configured 1920×1080 display running at 60Mhz.

If my work history did not include working on developing 3D Graphics Libraries for Xorg I would not have known the root cause of this problem yet the two posts I found would have lead me to a possible solution.

Fedora 12 Upgrade Lead to 640×480 Display Resolution — Solution is a post from: Blue Gears

1. Upgrade vCenter Server
2. Upgrade ESX

Well, it was not all that easy.

vCenter Upgrade

When I went to upgrade vCenter it complained about the Guided Consolidation Utility that was installed. So I went to remove it, and the remove failed with all sorts of MSI errors regarding not able to make the necessary transforms. Even a reboot did not fix the problem. I needed to use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility. Which is no longer on the Microsoft website, so had to find it else where.

Problem 1: Removal of Guided Consolidation  required removial using Windows Installer Cleanup Utility

Once that was removed I had TWO sets of tables, stored procedures, and views defined. This complaint was in the 4.0U2 upgrade but the upgrade completed as is. This time the Installer stopped and wanted me to fix this. Well a bit of searching showed that the KB articles on VMware’s site were just a bit dated (vCenter 2.5 to 4.0 using MS SQL 2005). I did upgrade vCenter from 2.5 to 4.0 but on MS SQL 2008, you would think things would work, but they did not. After several attempts I decided to start over with a new database.

Problem 2: Multiple Schemas, I had TWO sets of tables, stored procedures, and views (or multiple schemas) with no way of knowing what to remove, alter, or keep.

I tried to delete all the duplicate tables, but ended up with missing data. So I restored and tried again trying to Delete just a few tables. I tried to Delete all duplicate Views then modify the schema of all non-duplicate views and stored procedures. But I was still with missing data.

The solution was to start over, which I did not mind doing as the environment is pretty small and allows me to clean up the databases from the upgrade.

Update 1: I also had to reconfigure vCenter to allow my VMs on Private Virtual Networks to migrate. I did this by opening up the Administration -> vCenter Server Settings Dialog, clicking on Advanced Settings and adding config.migrate.test.CompatibleNetworks.VMOnVirtualIntranet with a value of false. No need to reboot the vCenter server using this method

Update 2: VMware Data Recovery was no longer a solution within my vCenter server once I started over, so I had to reinstall the plugin then restart the vSphere Client to once more have VDR as a Solution.

Update 3: I have been using VKernel tools since GetstaltIT Tech Field Day Boston (spring 1010), and the new install of vCenter caused me to have issues with the VKernel Monitoring. Specifically, I had to reattach Capacity Analyzer and the Optimization Pack to vCenter once more. Optimization Pack connected with no issues, but with Capacity Analyzer I had to remove the previous connection and recreate the connection. Then I had to relicense my ESX hosts within Capacity Analyzer. Not until I did all these tasks did these two VKernel products work once more.

VUM Upgrade

Next was to install/Upgrade VUM and that failed. I kept getting the same authentication error and the installer would stop. The KB articles helped here but did not cover everything. KB1003468 fixed most of the issues but did not comment on the VI 4 Update folder that contained all the old SSL certificates. Once I removed that folder and restarted the upgrade all worked as expected.

Problem 3: “Error 25085 - Setup failed to register VMware Update Manager extension to VMware VirtualCenter Server”, following KB1003468 and removing the VI 4 Update folder solved the problem.

ESX Upgrade

With a little help from VMguru.nl I started my ESX v4.1 upgrade. There are two things that MUST be fixed after the upgrade however, related to the passwords which is covered within the VirtuallyGhetto blog. This is to change the password requirements to use md5 and not DES based encryption for authentication purposes. VMware will soon have a patch for this. Yet, this did not solve my authentication completely. The other issue is that pam_access is now being used, and my administrative local account was not allowed via pam_access after the upgrade. To fix this I had to modify /etc/security/access.conf to allow this user.

Now I am upgraded and will migrate to Virtual Distributed Switches shortly.

vSphere Upgrade: Going to 4.1 is a post from: Blue Gears

Any laptop must be able to run the following at the same time within a hosted virtualization solution such as VMware Workstation or Fusion.

• VMware vSphere ESX 4
• VMware vSphere ESX 4i
• VMware vCenter Server on Windows 2008
• Virtual Storage Appliance (I use OpenFiler at the moment)
• Firewall
• Development Environment for my security script

Now I have all this running on my older Duo Core laptop within 8GBs of memory and multiple USB disks and let me tell you, it runs SLOWLY but it will run. I was in the market for something much faster and perhaps with more memory.

So I was in essence looking at a 16GB i7 laptop, but I settled for an 8GB i7 laptop with a 512GB SSD that “Just Works.” I was all set to plunk down cash on a Windows 7 based laptop when I went on the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day and found out that my camera would not stream video and required me to reboot several times in the midst of the briefings. This was just too many reboots during a critical time. I do not believe that ‘fixing’ a problem should require a reboot. A reboot just covers up the problems. My First attempt at a fix was to purchase a Microsoft HD Life Camera, but the video quality was worse than my Logitech HD camera all in all not very satisfactory.

I really agonized over this decision, I had to make sure my applications were all available on the Mac. Most if not all were, and after talking to my friend who was a long-time Mac owner, I switched back to a Mac (actually my first every computer purchase was a Mac IIsi followed soon by the MacBook Duo and up until last year I owned a Mac G4). I knew my VMs would run within 8GBs as they already did, so extra memory was not a huge issue. The big issue was to invest in SSD over standard drives. Now that was  a great decision. So soon I was the proud owner of a 15″ MackBook Pro i7 with 8GBs of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Now what did I install on this MacBook Pro?

Paid Applications:

• VMware Fusion 3.0 which now runs in Unity mode my two applications I already owned for Microsoft Windows and use quite often: Visio 2007 and QuickBooks 2010.
• Codeweavers CrossOver Office (in which I could run Visio 2007 but choose not to do so). I do run IE6 within CrossOver office however, only way to talk to my very old Tape Library.
• Codeweavers CrossOver Games (still need to install those games but that should not be difficult seeing as I have already done this for Linux.)
• Microsoft Office Mac (I already owned a copy)
• Final Cut Express (Pre-installed)
• Belkin F5L009 – (USB over Ethernet) to access my Printer
• Livescribe Desktop – I already owned the Pulse Smart Pen
• FlipShare – I need access to my Flip Videos
• Little Snitch – An application based port filtering firewall as I really wanted to know what was going on. Thanks to Scott Lowe for pointing me to this little gem.
• Trillian – I own an professional account on this service for all my IM Needs
• Emailchemy – I had to switch my mail from Outlook to my Mac mail application, first I tried Entourage but that was a bust so I now use the Mac Mail.app even with its quirks
• Transmit – So I can upload those book files easier (I have not paid for this yet, I may switch to Cyberduck, but I still need to test with the file server.)

Now for the Free Applications

• Skype – gotta keep in touch. I actually can use the Windows Beta with multiple video streams inside Fusion but it has a few issues with echos
• Remote Desktop Connection – Still the best way to reach Windows boxes necessary for VMware management
• FireFox – I prefer this to Safari and Chrome actually, but use all to test websites.
• SnagIt Beta – I use SnagIt on Windows and wish to continue to use SnagIt on Mac to capture images. It is what I know and has a powerful image editor.
• Tweetie – for all those tweets. I tried twhirl but my friend said it drains battery being an Air App
• DropBox – For File sharing
• Chicken of the VNC – So that I can access all those Linux desktops not using XRDP
• Tunnelblick – For my OpenVPN connection
• Xcode and X11 – I do develop code so why not!
• Adobe Air – while it does drain battery, I have need for this for an upcoming product from a friend of mine for whom I do some beta work
• Windows Media Components for QuickTime – Gotta view those WMVs everyone posts.

Now for the Extras as in Hardware

• Speck Clear Hard Case (While at EMC World I noticed quite a few of these on MacBooks and I liked the look and feel of the case. The MBP needs a little extra protection).
• 85w MagSafe Power Supply (I picked up a second one so I could have one for travel.)
• USB to PS/2 connector (My laptop hooks to my PS/2 KVMs and the second one I bought works on Linux but not the MBP. The one I bought YEARS ago for the Mac G4 works great with the MBP.)
• Griffen iMic (I have a very good wand Mic that is best for using Skype, etc. as it is unidirectional and it is not amplified so need a tool that would do that for me.)

There you go. Now I have a laptop that “Just Works”, boots quickly, and plays all my music with no major issues.

Unfortunately I have had 1 hang, 1crach, and one small issue that have been easily diagnosed. Instead of just rebooting, I could actually fix the problem, the crash logs are far easier to read.

1. I installed the Logitech  Keyboard management tool, thinking I needed it for my Trackball, when in fact it was not needed. Since there was no Wireless keyboard the tool got confused. Removal of this unneeded software was the solution. Since I will not need a wireless keyboard with the MBP, its moot. This was a hang during runtime. Actually, I do not think it hanged as much as did not allow me keyboard access.
2. I had attached a NTFS formatted USB drive that caused some issues. After I copied the data off the drive, I removed the drive from the laptops USB hubs and never had the same problem again. I believe the drive itself is the issue, and was hardly used with my old laptop. This was a crash at shutdown not during boot or normal work.
3. Weird Mouse problem using a remote USB Mouse <-> PS/2 <-> KVM <-> PS/2 <-> USB on the MBP. I think my KVMs got confused as once I reset them, all worked once more. I know its a confusing setup but it is what I used before. This occurred during startup but everything worked fine from the MBP, so it was the KVMs in use.

Now to discuss the primary reason for using the MBP.

VMware Fusion 3 opened all my VMs that were created in VMware Workstation 7. ESX booted in less than 30 seconds, which is a huge improvement most likely due to the SSD in use as well as the i7. So far all my VMs run quite well with no major issues.

What I really like about the MBP, is its slim size, backlit keyboard, great graphics, built-in iSight video, and its pure performance. Could I have found all this in a standard PC? Yes, but the ultimate in the MBP is that it ‘Just Works’.

Moving from Windows 7 to Mac OS Snow Leopard is a post from: Blue Gears

Now that I know how to configure this, I wanted to make use of the higher performance. To do this, I had to

1. first offload all VMs from the SAN to some other storage by way of SVMotion
2. backup any RDMs I have
3. update the LUN layout of the IBM DS3400 to be 11 disks in a Raid 5 with virtual LUNs presented to ESX
4. SVMotion the VMs to the new LUNs

Step 1

The tasks seem simple enough, but first I had to find some available storage. Given that I just got this lovely brand new Iomega IX2 with a TB of available space, I decided to give it a shot. It supports CIFS, NFS, and iSCSI.

First I tried NFS. That did not work. So then I tried iSCSI. After it took over an hour to build a 500GB LUN, i tried to present it to ESX. ESX did not recognize the device. Perhaps it was the iSCSI implementation so I tried to see the device using Linux using the following command:

iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p ipAddress

That produced no results. So I rebooted the device. This allowed the above command to work but ESX would still not recognize the device.

UPDATE: The problem is NOT with the iSCSI implementation but the fact that the iSCSI Network is not the one the IX2 was actually on, once this was found, all worked as expected. However, too late to be used as a temporary LUN for the rearranging my SAN, unfortunately. NFS also works once the IP address was correct on the IX2, it definitely speak NFSv3 over TCP.

So on to plan B. Which was my recently increased local disk space to hold all my VMs just in case my SAN had issues. Storage found onto step 2.

Step 2

Backup of the only RDM I have was per normal means, I generally back this up to another server that currently has 6TBs of disk within it. 2TBs planned as a mirrored OS, 2 TBs for iSCSI, and 2TBs for general storage. This server speaks CIFS, NFS, and iSCSI as well but iSCSI and NFS was not quit working at the time I choose to proceed. Even so, I had to carve up the space per my design just a bit early, but that was trivial using the Linux command system-config-lvm.

SVmotion continued but took a few days to complete. For powered off VMs I choose to use the cold migrate method over any other as I just wanted to use one tool (vCenter).

I am always amazed that vCenter can SVMotion itself. I was even able to SVMotion my file server with the attached RDM pretty easily.

Step 3

Destroying the existing volumes on the SAN and restructuring the device was trivial. I am above all looking for performance as well as redundancy. So I created a 11 Disk RAID-5 physical LUN with a single hot-spare. On top of this physical LUN, I created 3 Logical Volumes I then presented as distinct LUNs to the hosts. Each of these logical LUNs was 512GBs in size (leaving plenty of space on the SAN for future growth). In addition, each of the logical LUNs was presented and zoned through a different controller, this way I can make use of both controllers in this active, active SAN. I labeled them, ESXPRIMARY, ESXSECONDARY, and FSRDM. This way I am not confused going forward. Everyone needs a naming convention.

Step 4

SVMotion and cold migration of the VMs to the newly created LUNs presented no issues except for two VMs.

The first was my fileserver. Since this machine was powered off during all of this due to the deletion of the RDM. It was cold migrated and the older RDM was deleted, and the new one put into place.  The file server is a Linux system so adding the RDM just took use of system-config-lvm and the rsync command to restore the files.

The second server that had issues was my vCenter server. I had forgotten that I had given it a single small RDM as an experiment with NPIV. This experiment was an attempt to get the IBM DS Software to see the controllers through the use of NPIV. It failed, but I never deleted the RDM/NPIV configuration. Since this did not exist, the SVMotion failed repeatedly.

Fixing vCenter Server

To fix the initial problem of vCenter not migrating I attempted a simple reboot, but Windows 2008 R2 just hung on boot. Thinking there was something a little more serious I investigated the vmx files and the associated vmware.log and noticed the RDM configuration. Once that was deleted by attaching the vSphere Client directly to the host the VM would boot. A subsequent SVMotion worked but left the vCenter in an odd state.

The odd state was that vCenter now appeared on two different datastores, the new LUN and the temporary home of the VM. This was very confusing as the temporary home showed no files! So I attempted to VMotion the VM as that sometimes fixes these discrepancies but that failed as the temporary space was the local storage. But I got another clue, it said it was not possible due to a linked clone. Since Linked Clones are part of SVMotion this made sense. vCenter basically had some incorrect information.

The solution was to power off the vCenter VM, connect to the host using the vSphere Client directly, unregister the vCenter VM, and then re-register the VM (which I actually performed from the command line). Once that was done, I rebooted vCenter and it no longer showed up on both LUNs.

Simple yet straight forward at the start, time consuming to perform, but when problems occur be prepared to delve into log files to trouble shoot and use single host mechanisms to fix. I would like to thank all those that gave me ideas on twitter @ChrisDearden, @JasonBoche,  @JimPeluso, etc.

vSphere Upgrade: Rearranging LUNs for Better Performance: Updated is a post from: Blue Gears

The first controller went with out a hitch. I had to first identify the controller(s) which went fairly easily and then I evacuated all the LUNs from that controller to the other controller. This was simply down by changing the preferred path for the LUN. So for Controller A, I set all the LUNs using Controller A to have a preferred path through Controller B. Then I was able to Place Controller A offline.

To determine which controller was controller A was simply a case of looking for which controller was ‘dark’ I.e. no Ethernet or FC traffic. Pulling the controller and replacing the battery was pretty straightforward once this was determined. With the new battery in place the controller was once more inserted. Then Controller A was brought back online. No issues! No Downtime whatsoever!

The process follows for Controller B

1. Modify all LUNs so that they had a preferred path of Controller A
2. Bring Controller B offline
3. Extract the Controller
4. Exchange the Batteries
5. Reinsert Controller B
6. Bring Controller B online
7. Reset the battery count down to 0 days.

Unfortunately I had a problem at the second step of this process. Controller B did not pick up the DHCP address assigned to it, in fact it referenced a completely separate subnet. I thought there was a controller issue and went through many convolutions and attempts to get the proper IP and subnet. I went so far as to set the VM hosting the IBM System Storage DS Manager to be within the subnet of Controller B and this still did not work. The cables all showed light but no activity. As a last ditch I switched out the cable and viola it worked. The DHCP address was picked up and I was finally able to proceed with the process once more upgrading the battery with zero downtime.

Even though all this worked, I discovered something interesting. I still need direct FC access to upgrade the firmware as well as sync the onboard clocks. Which bothers me somewhat as at the moment there is no way to see the FC device from within the VM.

I also discovered how to make SAN volumes with Virtual LUNs which will help me later when I redo the SAN to increase the spindles per SAN volume and therefore per LUN.

Key Take away:

• Redundant Controllers help with simple updates
• Always check your network cables when there is an issue

IBM DS3400 Redundant Controllers and Bad Batteries, eNet Cable Fail is a post from: Blue Gears

I explained this choice in another post but suffice it to say, I need to be able to connect this USB device to a VM and then use it as part of my backup solution. This required a bit more work than before as now I had to include in my vNetwork a USB over IP device that would allow not only my printer but my Blu-Safe to be seen by multiple and individual VMs.  For this I chose the Belkin FL5009 5-port USB over IP device. While it has its issues, such as not working across a NAT, it does however allow me to share my printer with other VMs while locking the Blu-Safe to a very specific VM.

My Backup solutions require Windows 2003 and the Belkin FL5009 only works with Windows XP, Vista, or 7, which I found very frustrating until I discovered this post, “Setting up USB in VMware ESX and ESXi“. With only a few tweaks I was able to get the Belkin FL5009 to work as a service. The first tweak I did, was to upgrade my Windows 2003 template to Virtual Hardware version 7, which required a VMware Tools Upgrade to be done first. Once that was completed, I also added a USB device to the VM.

Added a USB device? Wait you could not do that before. Alas! You can now, vSphere Virtual Hardware 7 for ESX VMs. Just adding this device will ensure that all the proper drivers are available for USB over IP devices as well. Specifically you will need at least USBD.SYS, USBHOST.SYS,  and USBPORT.SYS and generally a few more. The other tweak is the paths this post used such as /../Belkin, etc. These paths do not exist, but really mean the Belkin Directory previously mentioned. Do not get to confused. If you have a Windows XP system, install the Belkin FL5009 connection manager and copy the files out. This is usually the best method. Be sure you have the proper files if you are using a 64bit version of a VM. I am not as I could not upgrade to Windows 2008 as Blu-safe does not support it. Definitely, make the Connect.exe for the Belking FL5009 a server per the how-to.

So, everything should work on a reboot, alas it does not. I could not ‘see’ the Blu-Safe from the VM at this point I went to sleep for the night.

In the morning, I looked at it again, checked all the service settings, restarted the VM, reconnected the devices within the Belkin FL5009 and still had no luck. More research showed a “Disc Jukebox Service.” I restarted this service and viola, the Blu-safe was now accessible to the Blu-safe manager.  So I know know that the Belkin Connect.exe service should start before the Disc Jukebox Service. The simple solution to this problem is to add a dependency on the Disc Jukebox Service requiring the Belken USB Hub Service to start first. To do this add a new Key to the HKLM\System\ControlSet001\services\DISC_VSMC_A registry element of the name ‘DependOnService’ with a Type of REG_MULTI_SZ and a value of ‘Belkin USB Hub Service’. Now the Blu-ray device will be accessible on boot.

Takeaways:

• The Belkin USB over IP device FL5009 does allow multiple machines to pin USB ports or to share them in the case of my printer
• vSphere Virtual Hardware 7 contains a USB device that should be used when trying to connect to USB over IP devices so that there is no more looking for missing device drivers.
• Sometimes there are service dependencies for devices presented by USB over IP to a VM.

Now to find enough diskspace on an already crowded SAN to temporarily place the backups before putting them onto the Blu-safe!

vSphere Upgrade – The Backup Saga is a post from: Blue Gears

The problem is that VMware Update Manager and VMware vCenter Server collide when they are both trying to access the MSSQL 2008 database for some odd reason.

The solution is fairly easy, add a service dependency on VMware Update Manager so that it requires VMware vCenter to start first. To do this open up regedit and navigate to HKLM\System\ControlSet001\services\vmware-ufad-vci key and add a new Multi String Value named ‘DependOnService’. Give this new registry element a value of ‘vpxd’.

This will now place a dependency on VUM such that it requires vCenter to start first. Now on reboots, vCenter starts properly and I no longer have to manually start the service.

vSphere Upgrade – The Case of vCenter Not Starting is a post from: Blue Gears

As vStu discovered all virtual machine disk files (VMDKs) are presented to VMs as SAN disks and Windows 2008 changed how SAN disks were handled, in effect they are offline until you set them online. I kept getting a pesky, “Disk is Offline because policy was set by an administrator” message. Microsoft’s website does not even know about this error message apparently. But the solution is a combination of websites. First you need to change how Windows 2008 sees the SAN devices, then you need to clear a readonly flag, then you are good to go. Using ‘diskpart’ enter the following commands:

DISKPART> SAN POLICY=OnlineAll
DISKPART> RESCAN
DISKPART> SELECT DISK 1
DISKPART> ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY
DISKPART> ONLINE DISK
DISKPART> CONVERT MBR

Now you can use your normal mechanisms to add, format, etc. the disk into the system.

Once that is done, I used VM:/ETC’s instructions for changing the location of my VUM Donwload Directory to point to the new drive. The main reason for adding the new VMDK in the first place. Now I can force a download of Update 1, and patch my systems.

vSphere Upgrade – 2nd Disk Issues with Hardware 7 is a post from: Blue Gears

When you play around with Windows 2008 R2, if you do not properly upgrade VMware Tools before a Virtual Hardware Upgrade your VM will spin out of control sucking up CPU until you kill it. Which you have to do, in order to fix the issue. A reboot will fix the issue, but then you must upgrade VMware Tools before anything else happens. I suggest using Safe-Mode.

In one of the updates VMware kindly introduced a warning box when you upgrade Virtual Hardware to let you know that you need to update VMware Tools first. If you do not install VMware Tools due to security concerns, you may want to not upgrade your virtual hardware. I have not tried removing the tools after Virtual Hardware Upgrade, which may be another option.

Upgrade to vSphere – Virtual Hardware Updates is a post from: Blue Gears